Review of LILIM: Ominous Orphanage

March 13, 2025

It was the year 1983 somewhere in Northern Luzon. Issa (Heaven Peralejo) took her younger brother Tomas (Skywalker David) and drove away from their house after she killed their abusive father. When she stopped midway along her route, Tomas suddenly ran out of the car and into the forested area beside the road. Issa failed to catch up with him and just ran around the forest shouting his name, until she came upon a grand old house in a clearing.

The house turned out to be an orphanage run by eight nuns, led by Sister Marga (Ms. Eula Valdez). The nuns took Tomas in when they saw him wandering outside their premises. All the wards in the house were boys, who all had their hairs cut very short to prevent lice. Sister Marga allowed Issa to stay with them in exchange for doing her share of the household chores. Not long after, Issa began to notice eerie things about the house and the nuns.

Director Mikhail Red has a fondness for making horror films, including "Eerie" (2019), "Block Z" (2020), "Deleter" (2022) and "Nokturno" (2024). "Lilim" uses a lot of typically Filipino style horror tropes, like dark old house in a remote forest, mysterious nuns, scary masks, and ill-timed showers in the middle of the night. It relied so much on jump scares which had someone suddenly break the silence with a loud shout to startle viewers. 

The neophyte young actors playing the orphans were actually good, as showed dedication by having their hair practically shaved off. Skywalker David was convincing as the conflicted and confused Tomas. Dwayne James Bialoglovski played Prinsipe, the alpha bully of the group. John Ventura played Nilo, the friendly boy who tried to stand up for Tomas. VMX prince Gold Aceron was still able to pass for a boy, playing mute, autistic Gabriel. 

The behavior of Sister Marga, and the other nuns, Helena (Ryza Cenon), Trining (Nicole Omillo), Josephine (Phoebe Walker) felt off right away, even before that scene when Trining was forced to walk on the shards of a broken porcelain statue in her bare feet. Several scenes, like Helena's crying infant and Sister Marga's final action, had no logical explanation at all. The history of their congregation -- the titular Lilim -- would have been interesting to know.

Heaven Peralejo did well acting-wise, with the role given to her, the lines she had to say and the things she had to do. The beginning of her character arc was shocking, as we first saw her after she just killed her father with no backstory. It was just so unfortunate about the choice of dress she was given to wear for the entire final act. Her dark beige outfit with the puffed sleeves and ruffled accents on the skirt was distractingly ugly to the point of laughable. 5/10